[2] The catalogue of Paolini's sale states that Paolini purchased the painting from the family of Count Rackzinsky in Melbourne, Australia. The painting has not yet been identified in the collection of Count Atanazy Rackzinsky [1788-1874], Pozan and Berlin, which was for a time on loan to the Prussian National Gallery, Berlin. On Rackzinsky see Sammlung Graf Raczynsky. Malerei den Spätromantik aus dem Nationalmuseum Poznan, Munich, 1992.

The Paolini sale catalogue also places the painting in the "Renier Collection, Venice," an error compounded by International Studio 1929, 56; Lionello Venturi, Pitture italiane in America, Milan, 1931: pl. 389, and 1933: 3:pl. 528; and Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture from 1300-1800, Exh. cat. New York World's Fair, New York, 1939, which changed Melbourne the city to Lord Melbourne. They all identified the painting as the self-portrait by Titian known to have been in the collection of the painter Nicholas Regnier, and assume it to have passed with that collection to Catherine the Great of Russia and then to a Count Rackzinsky. The Regnier painting was, however, a tondo on panel.

[4] Letter of 10 November 1928 from Arthur von Dachne of the Van Diemen Galleries to Miss Randolph, secretary to Andrew W. Mellon, offering the painting for sale (NGA curatorial files). In 1935 the Berlin branches van Diemen and its affiliated galleries were liquidated by order of the Nazis, with sales organized by Graupe on 25 January and 26 April. This painting was not in either of those sales, and thus had been sold from or remained with the New York branch until 1935.

[6] According to notices in The New York Times, 25 October 1959: 70, and 27 October 1959: 39, Mrs. Timken had begun assembling, and lending, her considerable collection of paintings in the 1920s.

Exhibition History

1929

Van Diemen Galleries, New York, 1929, as by Titian.

1939

Masterpieces of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture from 1300-1800, New York World's Fair, 1939, no. 387, as by Titian.

1967

The Art of Venice: An Exhibition of Five Works of Venetian Masters on extended loan from The Lending Collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Tampa Bay Art Center, University of Tampa, Florida, 1967-1969, p. 2-3, repro.

De Grazia, Diane, and Eric Garberson, with Edgar Peters Bowron, Peter M. Lukehart, and Mitchell Merling. Italian Paintings of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1996: 328-333, repro. 331.

Technical Summary

The support is a plain-weave, medium-weight fabric. X-radiographs reveal another composition under the surface layer. At the center a female figure turns to the left with her breasts bared and her right arm drawn across her waist. A fist holding a dagger is visible at the right edge of the support. The shadow in the upper-left quadrant of the x-radiographs suggests the presence of another figure, and a layer of pink is visible with a stereomicroscope. Examination also reveals an overall warm dark red layer, but it cannot be determined if this is the ground or an intermediate layer between the compositions. X-radiographs also reveal that the sitter's left pupil was moved slightly to the right. The paint was applied thinly except in lighter passages.

There is cusping along all four of the fabric edges. The paint is abraded and has scattered losses throughout, especially in the sitter's head, beard, and hands, and the statue in the background. The discolored varnish is thinner over the lighter areas, exaggerating the contrast between the light and dark areas. The painting, which was lined at an unknown date, has not been treated since acquisition.